At its simplest, an agile workplace is one that successfully balances the people, places and processes of its organization. And when the balance is off, an agile workplace can adapt. It provides the room and resources that occupants need, or flexes to meet them when it doesn't.

The key to adaptability, of course, is knowing when the balance is off and having the insight to back your adjustments. Knowing how people use your space—through utilization studies and careful monitoring—is critical to innovation. It's the data that creative ideas spring from.

Via officerenew.com >

Personal desks haven’t disappeared entirely, but working at one day-in and day-out is on a dramatic decline. Like other major companies, Deloitte has gone all-in with the work-anywhere revolution. For years, the world’s largest accounting firm has been rethinking how offices of the future should look and function, and finding the best ways to keep employees happy and engaged.

Now they are transforming their vast global network of offices into fully realized open-concept hubs. The latest to open is in Toronto, housed in a newly constructed podium building designed by KPMB Architects and architects of record Adamson Associates and ERA Architects.

Via azuremagazine.com >

A desk is like a home away from home for many in the working world.

Family photos, trinkets from a vacation, an extra pair of shoes or spare chopsticks are just some of the things routinely left lying around in what has become personal space.

But that comes at a price for companies, particularly in cities like London or New York, where the cost of real estate is at a premium, and at a time when workers are more mobile than ever.

In its newly opened building in central London, the Swiss banking giant UBS is looking to change the way employees view their relationship with their work spaces.

Many of its employees at 5 Broadgate in the City of London will no longer be tied to the same desk every day with a telephone and desktop computer. Instead, the company has deployed so-called thin desks throughout the building.

Phone handsets were replaced by personal headsets, and employees can log onto their virtual desktops on computers at any desk in the building or at home. There are no laptops to lug around, and their phone numbers follow them from desk to desk or to their mobile devices.

Via nytimes.com >

Every year I give my top 10 workplace trend predictions for the upcoming year. You can read my predictions from 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 if you missed them. These trends are based on hundreds of conversations with human resource executives and workers, a series of national and global online surveys and secondary research from more than 160 different primary and secondary research sources, including think tanks, consulting companies, non-profits, the government and trade associations.

Between 2016 and 2017, the job market will continue to improve causing both job seekers and employees to have more leverage, which will cause salaries to increase and employers to invest more job advertising, staffing firms and employee benefits. Depending on who becomes the next president of the United States, hiring may freeze, slow or continue its current trajectory. The demand for a more flexible work environment will continue and you will see an emergence of HR practitioners with new skills, including people analytics, Internet marketing, branding and knowledge on new technologies like virtual reality and wearables.

Via forbes.com >

For all the talk a few years ago about the benefits of open offices--they facilitate collaboration and communication and make everyone equal, for example--some people are now backtracking. It turns out not everyone is thrilled with open offices because of the noise, the distractions, and the germs. Open offices may not be all they were billed to be, but does that mean organizations should go back to the more traditional, closed offices?

There's no real answer to this question because the debate often focuses solely on the physical office space. But an office by itself is just architecture and a building. What really makes the difference is the people and the environment of the office. Open offices are thought to be more forward thinking, but just because a company switches to an open office doesn't automatically make it a modern, future-proof organization. Likewise, an organization working in a closed office space isn't automatically traditional and stodgy. An office is merely the bones of the company that must be supported with the right culture and environment.

Via inc.com >